Bakken Hunter LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Houston-based Magnum Hunter Resources Corp., has filed an application seeking FERC authorization and a presidential permit to build and operate border-crossing facilities to import natural gas from Canada to North Dakota for processing.

Bakken Hunter is proposing to build a sweet gas gathering line from its operations in Saskatchewan to connect to a gathering system in North Dakota that is owned and operated by Oneok Rockies Midstream LLC. The line would have a diameter of 10 inches and would have an approximate design capacity of 5 MMcf/d. The company said it already has received the green light from the Department of Energy to import gas from Canada.

Bakken Hunter said the pipeline will allow unprocessed sweet natural gas that is currently flared in Canada to be conserved and processed in the United States for sale by Oneok, increasing the available gas supply in the U.S. The project will benefit end-users as well as provide economic returns to both countries, the company said.

The border-crossing pipeline also would decrease the environmental impact of Bakken Hunter’s oil and gas production in Saskatchewan and North Dakota by lessening emissions.

Given the “time sensitive nature of this application,” Bakken Hunter called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to “expeditiously grant the authorizations” that it has requested.

North Dakota is certainly no stranger to receiving gas from Canada. The state has imported anywhere between 12%-15% of the total natural gas shipped from Canada each year since 2007. Nearly 100% of the imports into North Dakota are courtesy of Alliance Pipeline, which crosses over into the U.S. at Sherwood, in the northwest part of the state. TransGas can also ship gas into WBI Energy Transmission at Portal, ND, though activity there was just a mere 8 MMcf in 2012.

Colorado-based Bakken Hunter is engaged in the exploration, acquisition, development and production of crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids in North Dakota. It is active in the Marcellus Shale in West Virginia and Ohio, the Utica Shale in southeastern Ohio and western West Virginia, and the Williston Basin/Bakken Shale in North Dakota and Saskatchewan.